Comment 87 for bug 148362

Just going back through some historical entries in my own user activity report. I see I added my address as a cc to this in 2004. :-)

Thanks, Petr, for your comment 77.

We do currently have support for multiple SMTP servers, and we do have the ability to specify which server should be used for which account and/or identity, however the original description of this RFE still remains valid, and suggest changing subject to:

Ability to automatically failover to one or more alternate SMTP servers

I know of no extension which currently provides this functionality.

More specifically:

Assume two incoming accounts:

<email address hidden> (personal email)
<email address hidden> (business email)

Now assume three SMTP servers:

smtp.shmoe.tld
smtp.joes-isp.tld
smtp.company.tld

When Joe sends mail from home, he'll first try his own SMTP server (smtp.shmoe.tld), but if that host is offline, he'd want to define his ISP as a failover (smtp.joes-isp.tld) (assuming SPF records were in place and such, so that mail coming from his ISP would not look like spam to the recipient).

Likewise, when sending work email from home, he might want to first try the Company server (smtp.company.tld), and if that should fail, then fall back to his ISP (smtp.joes-isp.tld), but *never* use his own domain for such outgoing email (smtp.shmoe.tld).

Thus, we would need a mechanism for defining the failover order for each account and/or identity, and not simply allow failover from one server to the next per placement in the list of outgoing servers in prefs.js.